


Nine Days

by blancafic



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with an Angsty Ending, Canon Compliant, Coma, Comatose Leo Fitz, Did I Mention Angst?, F/M, post 1x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 16:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15976361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blancafic/pseuds/blancafic
Summary: "On the first day she brings him flowers -- primroses and thistles, because a symbolic gesture should have a symbolic meaning."What Jemma went through during those nine long days when Fitz was in a coma.





	Nine Days

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful, and wonderfully supportive, beta [LibbyWeasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibbyWeasley/pseuds/LibbyWeasley), my constant star. She's really just the best.
> 
> And a very special thanks to [sunalso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunalso/pseuds/sunalso) for being my technical consultant and keeping me from making a fool of myself with the medical stuff, considering most of my knowledge comes from TV and movies and it turns out it's mostly ALL WRONG. *Shakes fist at Hollywood* (I kept some of it in anyway, shh.)

1.

On the first day she brings him flowers -- primroses and thistles, because a symbolic gesture should have a symbolic meaning.

He’s not supposed to have them in his room, because of the risk of infection, but she sneaks them in anyway. These particular flowers don’t pose any threat, thanks to the plant-safe UV sterilization process she developed (and he perfected) years ago when they were at Sci-Ops. As if she would willingly endanger Fitz like that. She’s a highly valued S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist with two PhDs, not some clueless family member bumbling around the ICU. Not being a family member, she was worried they might not let her in to see him, but someone must have pulled some strings somewhere, because no one has dared question her constant presence at his bedside.

He can't see the flowers, what with being unconscious and all, but they brighten up the place a little. Until this morning she'd had a room of her own here, one floor up. Same beige chairs, same pastel curtains, same ugly laminated wood side table, but less medical equipment. A lot less. They’d only kept her overnight for observation, whereas he looks like he’s been assimilated Borg-style into the hospital’s inner-workings, like some kind of hybrid of man and machine. It’s right out of science-fiction. She has to move around the room carefully to avoid the tubes and wires. But now, at least, there are flowers.

A nurse informs her they're going to take him down to run some tests. Nothing more specific than that, just “some tests.” There’s quite a bit of commotion and lots of medical staff around him as they get him ready for transport. Her outbursts of “careful!” and “steady!” earn her more than a couple dirty looks and eyerolls, so she steps out and lets them work. She waits alone in his room, for how long she doesn’t know, until they return him to her. They won't let her see the results for herself, no matter how many times she rattles off her credentials. Just before they kick her out for the night she takes a look at his chart and wishes she hadn't.

2.

On the second day she talks to his doctors.

Or tries to. Mostly she asks lots of questions, which they answer in vague generalities and infuriatingly optimistic platitudes. "He's stable for now." "The best thing you can do for him is be patient." "We'll just have to wait and see." They have questions for her too. Like, "How deep were you under water?" And, "How long was he without oxygen?" Despite her annoyance at the one-sided nature of these conversations she tells them everything she thinks will help in exhaustive detail.

She's told the story a dozen times by now, at least the most relevant bits. She always leaves out the part where he told her he loved her, maybe not in so many words but in every other way that mattered, right before forcing oxygen on her and blowing out the window. Which had been _her_ plan, by the way, so _she_ should have been the one to carry it out. Why did he get to be the one to decide? It was like he’d declared himself the winner in a contest of who loved who more without even allowing her to enter. He may have given her the oxygen, but he took her breath away first, and it was way worse than a hundred punches to the stomach.

She's not sure how long they'll let her stay by his side, but no one says anything and she's certainly not going to bring it up. She rests her head on her folded arms at the foot of his bed and drifts off to sleep.

3.

On the third day she talks to him.

She'd once read a study that suggested coma patients may respond positively to auditory stimuli. She doesn't completely trust the methodology, but she's willing to try anything. It helps her more than it does him, she suspects. She tells him about the base, how much he would love the big, shiny, new lab. There's so much more room to work and Coulson even approved her requisition form for a cyclotron that can produce technetium. Secretly, though, she kind of misses their old lab on the Bus. And since there's no one there to hear her confess it, she tells him so.

There are other secret thoughts she’s been having, but they are so forbidden she doesn’t dare give voice to them. Not even in her head. Instead, she tells Fitz that Coulson is thinking of turning their lab into a garage and bringing on a full-time mechanic. Another new face at the Playground. She’s having trouble remembering all their names as it is.

Daisy brings her lunch and a change of clothes. Coulson brings her dinner. They both urge her to go home or at least take a break from her constant vigil. Each time she makes it as far as the family waiting room, where the vending-machine junk food has no nutritional value, the magazines are dull, and the television is tuned to some insipid home-improvement channel. It's pointless, really. There's no place she'd rather be than Fitz's room. He's better company anyway.

4.

On the fourth day she talks to Ward.

Not directly, but to a screen displaying the video feed from his cell. She’s getting used to talking to herself while talking to other people. He can’t hear her any more than Fitz can, but there are things she needs to get off her chest, and as strange as it sounds, she’d rather pretend to say them to Ward. They are not nice things. The nice girl she used to be is still submerged somewhere, 90 feet below the surface. She thanks Ward for that and pledges to take revenge on behalf of that girl and the brilliant, handsome boy she loved.

Fitz isn’t getting any better, but he's not getting worse either. She buys him a new set of soft plaid pajamas, but one of the nurses kindly gives them back, saying they’d just be ruined in the hospital. Bodily fluids and all that squishy stuff he hates. They tell her to save them for when he comes home. She appreciates their optimism and tries it on for size. He will wake up. He will come home. He has to. But then, if and when he does, how can they ever go back to where they were? Nothing will ever be the same. And the pendulum swings back from hope to hopelessness.

They've spent years building walls, building an entire estate with rooms carefully constructed to compartmentalize their relationship. But in one fell swoop he tore everything down, leaving her to sort through the pile of rubble on her own. And she knows she must be exhausted because these ridiculous metaphors are getting away from her.

5.

On the fifth day the the flowers are past their peak, turning brown and slipping towards their inevitable decline.

The sanitization process might have hastened it. She’ll have to do more research on that. She doesn’t want to remove them just yet. She's read that consistency is important in recovery, and though he's not technically _in_ recovery, she doesn't see how it could hurt to leave them in place. She comes to the hospital every day at the same time and only leaves when they force her to. It's not officially a habit yet. It can take anywhere from twenty one to sixty six days to create a habit, which is actually quite a wide range when you think about it. Forty five days. Nine times as long as Fitz has been in a coma, which already feels like forever.

Skye and Coulson drop in from time to time. Even May makes an occasional appearance. There’s a pause in the afternoon rotation, an unusually long period of time when no one comes to check on him. So she takes it upon herself to change his IV drip and adjusts his medication to what she thinks are more suitable levels. When the doctor comes back she gets an earful about letting the medical professionals do their jobs. She has to bite her tongue to keep from screaming that what they're doing isn't working, so why not try something -- anything -- else?

6.

On the sixth day she gets angry.

Her request to move him to the base so she can monitor him more closely is denied. Coulson argues that Fitz needs a proper medical facility and trained doctors, because, apparently, for the first time ever, that distinction suddenly matters. He tells her she’s lucky she hasn’t been banned from the hospital. She knows he's right, of course. Fitz deserves the best care he can get and she doesn’t want to get in the way of that. And if she's being really honest with herself, she's too close to the situation to be objective. She vents all of this frustration out loud while pacing back and forth in front of his bed. No matter how much she rants and raves, though, there's no response or change in his condition. There's never any change.

She doesn't even notice the rhythmic beeping and hissing of the machines in his room anymore. She only notices the lack of them when she's in her own back on the base, and the silence scrapes against her like sandpaper. She can't sleep, so she throws on some clothes and drives to the hospital. The staff is light at this hour and no one stops her from letting herself into his room. It's the middle of the night and she's not thinking clearly and she's plumb out of ideas, so she brushes a few wayward curls off his cool forehead and tries ordering him to wake up. When that doesn't work, she raises her voice and commands him again, more forcefully, "Wake up, Fitz." She says it over and over and over, pleading with his unconscious form until her voice is a raw husk and her body is a crumpled, quivering mass on the floor. She's not entirely sure how she got there, but she doesn't feel like getting up or going home tonight.

7.

On the seventh day she throws the flowers away.

8.

On the eighth day there is hope.

It's slim and distant, like the early light of a rising sun, but maybe also like a mirage. When she gets to his room he's not there, and for one shining moment she thinks he might have gotten up and left on his own two feet. But when she goes to the desk to ask someone where he is she sees a team of nurses rolling him back to the room on a gurney. Before anyone can stop her she snatches the chart and finds the first bit of good news she's gotten since Fury fished them out of the Atlantic. Signs of improved cognitive function. He’s responding to pain and even opened his eyes once. She might be imagining it, but she thinks there's more color in his cheeks than there was yesterday.

When a doctor comes and starts talking about his improved score on the Glasgow scale she laughs and it feels strange because she thinks she might have forgotten how. The doctor looks at her like she doesn't know what's so funny, but Jemma can't bring herself to explain it. It occurs to her that she might not even know Fitz is Scottish. Which reminds her of his accent and his voice and all of him, really. She can see him right in front of her and touch his hand, but she still misses him.

It feels like her whole life is on hold while she waits for him to wake up so they can finally, finally talk. She might as well crawl into bed next to him for all she's contributed to the team and the world at large in the last week. The doctor is going on about the effects of hypoxia and aphasia and memory loss and impaired motor functions, but she barely registers any of it.

9.

At the end of the ninth day he wakes up.

She's not even there when it happens. She spends eight hours in the chair by his bedside, the one she's come to think of as hers, replaying in her head yesterday's conversation with the doctor and contemplating, not for the first time in the past few days, going back to school for a third PhD in advanced neurology. She can't see much difference in him herself, and as the day ends in the same way the last eight had, she allows herself to go home for a cup of tea and a shower. Her hair is still wet, dripping in rivulets down her white T-shirt, when Coulson comes to find her. She climbs into the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D. SUV with Skye, while May drives and Coulson sits shotgun. With May at the wheel it takes half the usual time to get there and Jemma is grateful for her haste. She won't believe it until she sees the blue of his eyes. She needs that more than she wants to admit.

They won't let them all go into the room together and there’s no need to discuss who should go first. She's not sure what she expected, but when she sees him she doesn't feel whole again or like the missing puzzle piece of her heart snaps back into place or whatever rubbish they say you’re supposed to feel. All she feels for him is pity. She knows how much he'd _hate_ that, but she can't help it. His eyes are open, but unfocused. He seems confused. The doctor makes small talk with him as she checks his vitals, but he doesn't respond. At least he’s breathing on his own, for the first time since the water rushed in.

He turns his head on the pillow when she walks in and his eyes widen a little. She's not sure if he remembers her, but then he's pulling at his tubes and trying to get out of bed. The doctor and nurse have to hold him down, but it only agitates him more. He struggles so mightily she has to flee the room, unable to watch any more. Behind her, the commotion stops as he calms down, but not until she’s out of his line of sight.

She comes out of the room sobbing and feels warm arms around her shoulders, then another pair, and another. The thought that's been creeping in at the edges of her consciousness finally takes root. She lets it in, unable to stop it from spreading, though she knows it will eventually become a weed and crowd everything else out. And it’s going to hurt, but at least the pain won't go to waste. Maybe there is a way she can help him after all. She’s not sure she has it in her yet to do what needs to be done, but they’re both on the mend and she’s getting stronger every day.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the angst.
> 
> If you want to shout at me on Tumblr, or just say hi, I'm @blancasplayground.


End file.
